


The World Your Enemy

by Island_of_Reil



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Conflicted Loyalties, F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, Spoilers for Chapter 86 and Later, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Work In Progress, will be jossed eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 11:25:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8247077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: “We need your help. I need your help,” Armin tells her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't think this newest chapter would inspire me to write anything, but I woke up today with some ideas. It's a WIP that will take some time to complete and likely be shaped by future chapters. The rating will probably change to cover violence, possibly sex.

Annie awakes in darkness.

She sits up, her chains clanking as she moves. There’s a candle and matchbox on the table next to the bed, but she doesn’t bother with those. There’s nothing to see down here anyway, unless it’s at night and that little asshole is sitting just outside the gate, half-sleeping and half-watching her with his beady little eyes.

When Annie woke for the first time since Stohess, she kept it together pretty well, she thinks. She didn’t start freaking out that she was awake and didn’t know where she was, which meant the crystal was gone. But the little asshole must have heard her stir. “Finally,” he said, and she heard him stand and then the sound of his boots on the stone steps.

About twenty minutes later he returned with a tall woman in a Survey Corps uniform wearing an eyepatch and the green bolo. _So Erwin Smith is dead,_ Annie thought.

“Annie Leonhardt,” the woman said, setting her own candle down on the bedtable. “A pleasure to meet you, finally. I’m Commander Hanji Zoe of the Survey Corps. And, well, I think you’ve met Captain Levi.”

Annie recognized the woman’s name as that of the crazy titan experimenter who’d inspired a lot of eyerolling at MP HQ. She continued to hold Commander Hanji’s gaze steadily, not saying anything. She didn’t even bother to glance at the little asshole. It wasn’t like they were going to shake hands.

Commander Hanji pulled up one of the two chairs from the small table across the room, then straddled it backwards, facing Annie. “So. I hope the accommodations are comfortable. Nobody’s used them since Eren, and that was quite a while ago.”

Something hot and bitter flared in Annie at Eren’s name. She disregarded it. _Survey Corps HQ dungeon, then._ She continued to say nothing. She pressed the fingers of her right hand together and noted, unsurprisingly, the absence of hard, cold, reassuring metal around the second one. Not that it’d have helped much, underground and surrounded by stone with no sunlight, and after however long in the crystal beforehand.

The new commander didn’t seem as crazy as rumored. Though it was hard to tell from less than a minute of one-sided conversation. Her remaining brown eye was sympathetic-looking, as though she were genuinely interested in Annie, her thoughts, her wants. Well, of course she was. The Survey Corps wanted information out of Annie, otherwise why take her out of the crystal.

“You don’t have to lie for the Mareans anymore,” Commander Hanji said.

Annie’s father trained her well enough not just in fighting but in masking her emotions, so she didn’t swallow or blink hard or catch her breath. _So they made it to Shiganshina and got into the basement, I guess._ Maybe everyone on Paradi who wasn’t a mindless titan knew the whole story by now. _Do the Mareans know they know?_ She stayed silent, watching Commander Hanji for clues.

After another thirty seconds of silence, the little asshole said, “You know, we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way.” Annie didn’t look at him or reply. He went on, “I helped Hanji pull a Central MP’s fingernails and teeth out a while ago.” There was a cold pang in Annie’s gut, but her father trained to her expect and withstand this, too. “He was pretty tough, I gotta say. Didn’t spill until Hanji threatened to put his nuts in a vise, one by one.”

Annie’s voice felt rusty in her throat after so long — _how long?_ — without speaking. “Whatever gets you off, I guess,” she said indifferently.

“That was business, not pleasure. Inflicting pain just for the fun of it isn’t _my_ bag, you little piece of shit.”

So many unspoken protests she had to stifle in her chest before they even got up into her throat: _No, I—_ and _You don’t understand—_ and _But Reiner—_ and _My father—_ She did give into the impulse, knowing she shouldn’t, to slide her eyes over to the left. He was as immaculately put together as he’d been in the Forest, he still looked vaguely familiar in a way she couldn’t place, and his eyes were even deader than they were then, with more lines around them. She directed her gaze back to Commander Hanji.

“I’d prefer to do this the easy way,” Commander Hanji said. And, suddenly, Annie wanted to laugh. In the course of four weeks of tagging along on assignments with experienced MPs she’d gotten to see the “good cop, bad cop” routine at least a dozen times. It’s not a subtle game, but it works on most people. Annie isn’t most people.

“We assume the Mareans threatened you and the other kids with harm to your families if you didn’t complete your mission successfully,” Commander Hanji continued. “As far as they know, you’re still in your crystal under MP Headquarters in Stohess, in strategic retreat but not surrender, still loyal to your mission. They can keep on thinking that while you work with us to free your family, and Reiner’s family, and Bertolt’s family, and all the other Elodians on the continent from Marean oppression.”

Well. That sounded nice. Revolutions always do sound nice in theory. If Grisha Jaeger left them any history books, they probably knew better.

Or maybe they didn’t. After all, Grisha Jaeger hadn’t, and from what she knows of him he wasn’t a stupid man. Just a very certain one. Like both his sons.

“What does ‘working with us’ entail?” she asked, flat-voiced. She wasn’t promising anything, just asking.

“Providing us with whatever intelligence you have, and providing whatever training you can to our new shifter,” Commander Hanji said calmly.

Annie wondered who’d gotten eaten. Reiner, hopefully. _Fucker._ “You wouldn’t have Eren train them?” she asked.

Something minute shifted in Commander Hanji’s face. “Eren will be too busy with other tasks,” she said. Just a hair too quickly, just a hair too pat. Maybe the lie was because Eren’s too impatient, too irritable to be a good teacher.

_Or maybe Eren’s dead._

Annie didn’t reply, just resumed the blank stare.

“I can understand you’ll need some time to think this over,” Commander Hanji added. “You’ve been trained all your life to think you were fighting for a just cause. I’m not as convinced as Captain Levi is that … persuading you forcefully to join our side would be to our benefit. You withstand pain well, from what Eren has told us. Your wounds would heal almost immediately. And I don’t personally believe that torturing a soldier would turn her into an enthusiastic and effective ally of her torturers.”

 _So you’re full of shit, then. Or at least your little rat terrier there is._ Annie continued to stare.

“That said, we _could_ keep you down here indefinitely. You’d have basic meals, a bath every few days, regularly changed sheets, medical care if needed, and a few politically neutral and harmless books to keep you from losing your sanity. If you wanted to exercise in the dungeon, Captain Levi could supervise you while you’re out of your shackles.” Commander Hanji paused. “Or, if you’d feel more comfortable with a female soldier watching you while you exercise, we could have Mikasa Ackerman stand guard instead.”

Annie ignored the wave of corrosive hatred that the name triggered, capping off the flood of dread that had preceded it, and continued to stare impassively at the commander. She’d hoped the commander would say instead, _We’d have to dispose of you as a threat to our efforts. We hope you understand that._ And Annie _would_ have understood. It was war, nothing personal. If they were honest about not being into torture for its own sake, they probably would have just decapitated her with a blade. A minute of pain, and then … nothing. She’d have died a Marean hero and martyr.

They’d have left her father alone.

Finally Commander Hanji said, “All right, then. You know your options. Whenever you want to talk more, the door is open… metaphorically. Just tell Captain Levi or Mikasa or whoever’s guarding you, and I’ll come see you again as quickly as my schedule permits.” Then she rose, swung her long leg back over the chair, and headed back upstairs. The little asshole took the chair and set it neatly back at the table before he walked out, relocked the gate, and parked his own short ass on his own chair on the other side.

That was about a week ago. Since then, Annie’s had three baths, during each of which Mikasa stood on the other side of the bars radiating hostility like a titan radiates stench. Annie doesn’t give a shit if Mikasa sees her naked, which happened all the time during training anyway, but it’d be nice if she could have a long soak without those cold black eyes boring into her. She wondered if anything’s changed between Eren and Mikasa since Stohess, if they’re fucking yet or if Mikasa’s still pining over him. She can’t imagine Mikasa giving up and finding someone else. During the second bath she idly thought about rubbing herself off while moaning Eren’s name as loudly as possible. Not that she’d have done it. She does have some dignity left. Also, with her luck it’d probably have gotten back to Eren.

If Eren’s still alive. If anyone from the 104th’s still alive, other than Mikasa. If they are, she wonders if they’re under orders to stay away from her, for fear she’d get them to feel sorry for her.

Or if they just don’t want to talk to her. Which, Annie guesses, is understandable.

Her meals are, as Hanji promised, basic. Breakfast is oatmeal with raisins plus a half-boiled egg. Lunch and dinner are always rye bread or potatoes with beans and a little vegetable cooked in some animal fat. Enough nutrients, no variety, not much flavor. She wonders if Mikasa spits in her meals before the blond recruit whose name she’s already forgotten brings it downstairs to her. The kid was irritatingly friendly and open at first. That stopped after a few rounds of no replies and cold stares. Now he just mumbles nervously as he sets the tray down and leaves, which suits Annie fine.

She isn’t going to fall back to sleep any time soon. She doesn’t know what time it is, other than that it’s still night. They won’t let her have a clock or pocket watch. Resignedly, she lights the bedside candle. The little asshole’s head rotates in her direction, but she ignores him as usual and picks up a Sina fashion magazine, squinting at the pages in the dim. They use much finer paper in these magazines than they do for the streetcorner broadsheets, and the sketches are all in color. The cover article has drawings of women wearing gowns or blouses and skirts she associates with farm or city workers, except cut from fine cloth and without stains or mends. They’re all wearing their hair long and flowing. The overexcited copy says that noblewomen are dressing like this most of the time now, based on trends set by “Queen Historia Reiss.” Annie wonders whatever happened to King Fritz. Did this Historia person marry him, and if she did, why did she keep her maiden name?

She hears the little asshole stand and stretch, his joints popping audibly and the pops echoing off the stone. Annie imagines tearing his limbs out of their sockets, one by one. On the open plain before the Survey Corps rode into the Forest, she did that to a couple of soldiers, and she pretended she was dismembering animal carcasses for dinner. She thinks she wouldn’t have to pretend anything if she were able to shift and do that to this little asshole. He says nothing to her, just turns around and walks upstairs. It’s morning, then. Breakfast will be soon.

The footsteps she hears coming back downstairs are lighter and less sure than the asshole’s or the blond recruit’s. She gets a cold chill of recognition when she sees the candlelight glint off his hair and the nearer side of it swing with his gait as he carries the tray downstairs.

She remembers telling him at the mouth of the tunnel that she should have killed him when she had the chance. Unbidden, she imagines his slender neck between her titan fingers, his chin propped up on her massive thumbnail, and she imagines her titan self imagining she’s popping the head off a daisy.

Armin sets the tray down on the little asshole’s chair, then unlocks the gate before picking the tray up again and letting himself in. He hasn’t had his growth spurt yet, if he ever will. But he looks older, a lot older, than he did before. His eyes are wide, adjusting to the dim light and taking Annie in, and at the same time they’re intensely guarded.

Annie notes two bowls of oatmeal, two egg cups, and two steaming mugs on the tray. She thinks she smells tea. They never give her tea. She doesn’t know if the Paradians have learned about coffee yet, but if they have they don’t give that to her, either.

“Hi, Annie,” Armin says. He doesn’t smile. She can’t tell if he’s afraid of her or if it’s just the kind of awkwardness that you can’t exactly eliminate from this kind of situation. _Hi, how’ve you been since you killed a bunch of my comrades and flattened a whole town? Good, I hope?_

“Armin.” It’s a flat acknowledgment, nothing more.

“Uh. They said I could have breakfast with you. I-if you want. I can unlock your shackles for that and we can sit at the table. Or, I can just leave the tray by the bed.”

Whether or not it was Armin’s idea, the why is pretty obvious. Whatever, it’s a break in routine, and she’s not ashamed to say she’s already desperate for that. “Sure,” she says in the same flat tone. She’s not committing to anything. Also, she can pick his brain as much as he’s obviously going to pick hers.

Armin sets the tray on the small table, then returns to the bed to unshackle her. His hands are surprisingly smooth-looking for a soldier’s, even the skin on the knuckles and around his nails. She can smell him this close, smell the soap he washed with last night, the bright-feeling warmth of his skin in the cold and clammy dungeon. She feels the twitch of involuntarily response in her throat, in her nipples, and she shuts it down hard. It’s not that much of a challenge, not after having spent all those afternoons in the training yard literally throwing herself at Eren and straddling his hips, then mopping up her own wetness in the latrine later on.

“Can — can you get up by yourself?” he asks nervously.

“Of course,” she says as she stands and shoves her feet into old shoes. He probably knows that Mikasa comes downstairs to guard her while she does jumping jacks, sit-ups, push-ups, one-foot stands, and stretches. If he doesn’t, she doesn’t see the need to tell him. She flexes her limbs, joints popping just like the little asshole’s did. The ratty old flannel pajamas they give her cover her up pretty well, but Armin cuts his eyes politely away from her nonetheless.

Her father always said that chairs were bad for your back muscles, so they only ever used chairs in the house when there were guests, which wasn’t often. By themselves, they sat cross-legged on the floor, even taking meals like that. In training she got used to chairs. It’s weird to be back in one. She shifts her buttock muscles against the hard wooden seat as if to keep the thing from draining whatever remains of her conditioning out of her.

Armin squints at her. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she says, reaching for her mug. There’s a creamer and sugar cubes for the tea, which turns out to be as good as what she had when she was with the Military Police. Of course, the Survey Corps has gotten into the Jaeger basement, probably reclaimed the whole Maria territory; they’d be in favor again these days and the money pouring in. She wonders if Sasha asks for and gets sausage regularly. If Sasha’s still alive, of course.

They’re quiet for a few minutes while they dig in. Armin also brought her a pinch of black pepper wrapped up in a little twist of paper. Just the smell of it makes her mouth water so hard that her eyes do too. It’s delicious on the egg. They usually don’t even give her salt, other than what was already in the bean water or animal fat. 

“So,” Armin says over his tea mug. “I … I was curious to see how you were.”

“I’m fine,” Annie says blandly. He was good enough to bring her tea and black pepper, and those might have been his idea alone, so she’s not going to give him the cold stare. She can be nice, after all. “How are you?” she adds.

“Well… okay, I guess.” He takes another sip. Annie waits him out, watching him with mild expectation. His face is still round for his age, but it’s thinner, his features more defined if you look closely enough. Maturation? Stress? Both?

“How’s everyone else doing?” she decides to venture. It sounds more like politeness than prying. She guesses. She’s never been great with this sort of thing.

“They’re — they’re fine,” Armin says with just a flicker of hesitation, as though he feels like he’s betraying his fellow Corpsmen by giving her that much information. Or by lying about them. Annie wonders which of them are fine and which are not.

She stirs her remaining oatmeal with her spoon and says, “You didn’t come down here just to socialize.” There’s no point in adding _did you?_ to the end of it or letting her inflection lift.

“Well… no. We need your help. _I_ need your help.”

The _I_ makes her lift her head and stare at him. Still not as coldly as she stared at Commander Hanji, but more focused than she was a minute ago.

Armin looks down at his lap. “I know the Commander visited you when you first woke up and talked to you. I don’t know how much she told you.” Annie remains silent. It doesn’t seem to unnerve Armin, which surprises her. She’s not sure if she’s relieved or disappointed. He finally goes on, “The Survey Corps has another shifter, in addition to Eren.”

“She did tell me that,” Annie says. She waits a second, and when Armin hasn’t spoken yet, she thinks, _Ah, to hell with it._ “Who’d they eat?” she asks.

Armin’s throat works. “B-Bertolt.”

_Shit._

Not because she’s going to miss Bertolt. She didn’t hate him, exactly, but he was always … just _there_ , sweating and silent when they were with other trainees, unable to talk about anything except the mission when it was just the three of them or her and him alone. And staring at her with all too obvious longing in his eyes, though she’s sure he thought he was being subtle about it. Bertolt was smart, but he wasn’t _that_ smart.

 _Shit,_ because she wishes it was fucking Reiner whose head got popped like a grape.

Armin picks up the last of his tea and swills it, even as his face twists and he looks like he’s going to gag on it. When he puts the mug down for the last time, he looks resolute. He’s probably waiting for her to ask who ate Bertolt. It doesn’t matter that much to her. Unless it’s Mikasa, which would be grimly hilarious. But Annie can’t imagine they’d ask her to train Mikasa, even if Mikasa would accept the training as ordered.

“Did they tell you who ate Bertolt?” Armin asks.

“No.”

He doesn’t reply, just stares at her, lower lip starting to quiver. And then the pieces start to assemble themselves in her head, and it hits her like she just ran face-first into Wall Sina.

 _“You?!”_ It’s the most emotion she’s shown since she first woke in the dungeon.

“Yeah,” Armin says softly, and one corner of his mouth quirks up a little. “Me.”

Annie blinks at him, trying to imagine him sixty meters high and spitting fire. It’s funny. It’s nightmarish. It’s something she never would have wished on him.

“They… they want you to help me out with my titan form,” he says. “So do I. It’s … awkward.”

“Why do you need me for that?” she asks bluntly. “You’ve got the Colossal powers. You start fires and you make things explode. You don’t fight hand to hand. Am I right?”

“Y-yeah,” Armin says, looking down at his lap again. “I’ve shifted a few times out in the exercise yard. Like I said, it’s awkward, trying to move around in that body. I’d like to have more mastery over my form. And, well. I don’t expect to ever fight as well as you do, or Eren does.” _So Eren’s alive._ “But learning a little couldn’t hurt.”

“Why can’t Eren train you?”

Armin raises his head and stares directly at her. “He’s afraid he’ll hurt me.”

Annie blinks again and suppresses an even louder laugh. “How? By biting your ankles?”

He turns brick red. “He … he’s just not giving it all he can. He used to protect me all the time from bullies. I don’t think he can psychologically bring himself to fight me, even if I’m four times his size and can set stuff on fire now.”

Annie shakes her head. Life is cruel and hard, and it’s also absolutely ludicrous in ways you don’t even expect until you’re in the middle of them. To laugh right now wouldn’t be to give anything away, but something in her resists laughing at Armin. He brought her tea and coffee, he’s the one who told her Bertolt’s dead, he’s coming off so … so earnest. He’s jerking her strings, of course, just like he did in that alley. But he still looks and sounds like an urchin pleading for a crust of bread.

She sits back in her chair and regards him. “My titan’s fourteen meters tall. How am I supposed to spar with a sixty-meter one?”

“You’re … you’re not. But, well, you knew Bertolt pretty well. Right? And you were trained in the Warrior program. So you’d know things about the Colossal powers that we don’t. And that Eren’s dad didn’t.”

 _Ah._ She wonders why she feels the stab of bitterness. She expected this, or something like it. “I don’t know,” she says, crossing her arms and staring at the floor.

“You want to get out of the dungeon, don’t you?” Armin asks, and though his inflection goes up he’s not asking a question, any more than she was earlier. “Be outdoors again? Sunlight, grass, trees, birds? Flowers?” He pauses. “Maybe, someday, the ocean?”

She shrugs. The word _ocean_ makes her flash back to when they were striding across the bay to Paradi, and she was in up to her chest at the deepest point. She was close enough behind Bertolt that the water around her was still tepid, not ice-cold, but the weeds were slimy under her feet and she swore she could smell rotting fish on herself for a week afterward. The ocean is only a big deal to brain-wiped Paradians who are lucky enough, or unlucky enough, to stumble across heretical books.

“I’d… really appreciate it if you helped me,” Armin says softly. “For what it’s worth, even after - after everything that’s happened... I still think you're a good person, Annie.”

Annie says nothing for a long while, just stares at some random spot on the floor a few meters behind him.

She doesn’t look up when she hears his chair shift. She just assumes he’s gathering up the plates. So when she feels his hot hand on the back of her own, she jerks backward and throws her head back to glare at him. He pulls back just as fast. Her body’s reacting to his touch again, which makes her as angry as his presumption does, and the first words to come to her mind are a weapon that she fashions inside her mouth and spits at him.

“So you inherited Bertolt’s obvious itch to get into my pants, too?”

“I-I’m sorry!” Armin blurts, and there’s a hint of tears in it. She wants to laugh again. Sixty meters tall, able to blast an entire city to ashes … and just as successful with girls as Bertolt was.

Instead she puts her face in her hands. “Armin… just go. Thank you for the tea and the pepper,” she forces herself to add, “but … I want to be alone for a while.” She lets a beat go by. “Please.”

“O-okay.” His voice is calmer now, but his dejection is obvious. She listens to the plates and mugs clink against one another in his hands and on the tray.

Suddenly she’s exhausted, like she hasn’t slept the night at all. She listens to Armin’s bootsteps retreating, the tumblers clicking in the gate lock, the diminishing tread of his boots again on the stairs.

She gets up, lies down on the bed, tries to cry. She can’t. She hasn’t cried since she was six, because Warriors don’t cry and if they do they’re sorry for a long time afterward. Eventually she sits up to blow the candle out. Then she stretches out again, and at some point she’s no longer in the Survey Corps’ dungeon but standing in her father’s yard. His hands are on her shoulders, and she can’t see his face in her dream but she can hear his voice: _Treat the whole world as your enemy._


End file.
